Agenda - 05-04-2006-7a - Laserfiche WebLink

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13 as general access to medical care. The mental health issue was referred to another subcommittee. She mentioned other improvements like job training, housing for middle income elders, long-term care costs and driver safety which was one of their top issues. The issue with economic development dealt with the concern of the ability of people to pay their property taxes. Also, one of flieir top issues was the availability of more home-based preventative care and more education on "Choices" staying in your home/aging in place which they are going to have a session on today, They also feel that the faith-based orgatizations need to be involved. Third, they looked at possible solutions. Tlris has to do with livable and senior friendly communities which Carol Gunther-Mole will be talking about later in the agenda. The committee feels that the entire cotrutnmity -not just County government needs to focus on the idea of older adults as they age, She did receive Carol's proposal and although she sent it out to her subcontinittee, she did not get many continents -probably because the County is going through an email transition period, At their meeting, Myra Austin had asked each committee member to write down five (5) issues they wanted to see addressed and each member had four (4) votes to cast on one item or all four (4) on the sanre item. The attaclunent to the minutes identified as " 2A" has the results of this priority listing:. The first ranking was home-based community services for well elders including an increase in the number of retired healthcare providers/volunteers and enviromnental modifications. The next one was community assessment/outcome evaluation to assess how we are doing so far and what is still needed in the commm~ity. The third item was driver safety which included what the roads look like as well as driver education. The fourth item was access to affordable healthcare which is a huge issue and also ranking with five (5) votes was greater budget appropriations for the aging population.: These were the top five issues. The attaclmrent is made a part of these minutes by reference, Ann Johnson said that of all the committees, the Well-Fit Subcommittee will be responding to 95% of the population and that certainly senior centers which are not listed are the backbone of that population. Myra Austin said that it is listed as an item we are most proud of but is not listed as a need.. lanice Tyler noted that this item is listed further down on the priority issue list. Ann .Johnson feels it should be a higher priority. Gwen Harvey asked for the definition of a community assessment and asked who would do it, Myra Austin said that they did not identify who would do the assessment. It could be something that is done by the Department on Aging and it would be used to identify the needs in the community and of the things that aze being done already - what is being done well. Jan Busby-Whitehead asked what was meant by driver safety. Myra Austin said that this would include driver education, working with older adults, roadways, etc.. Janice Tyler said that they based this from two incidents which recently happened -the person going the wrong way on a divided highway and also an issue at the mall. A reference was made to the issue of access to affordable health care and it was suggested that this maybe something the Utiversity might partner with the community to help provide. Alice Gordon made reference to access to affordable healthcare and accessibility/affordability for oral health care and noted that these should both be priority issues. Florence Soltys said that not only is this a countywide problem, it is an Orange County problem, Jack C.heshrut said that as a member of the Well-Fit Committee, the first day was spent trying to identify the issues. They could have spent a lot of time on how to fix these issues but did not, He asked if the next cotttinittee will start working on how to fix the issues which have been identified and Florence Soltys said that the next step would be to make recommendations.. Page 2 of 8